In Memory of
by Arishako
Summary: Filled for a prompt which asked that Santana began to lose her memory at a young age. Brittana.


**Warnings**: Language, subject matter (strong memory loss)

**Word Count**: 1526

**Spoilers**: None, I think.

**Disclaimer**: Thankfully, I do not own Glee or any of the characters mentioned here.

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It all starts out with something so small.

Brittany and Santana cuddle on the couch, brown hair tangled with blonde and tan fingers tangled with pale. They're watching some weird cartoon about a boy and a girl and a skeleton, and Brittany suddenly giggles and says, "Remember that time we tried to train your dog to pull our wagon?"

Santana hesitates, frowns, flexes her fingers against Brittany's and finally lies, "Yeah. I do."

**-x-x-x-**

It's weird, Santana thinks, that she's only been alive for sixteen years, and already her life is _fading_. No, she's not, like, dying or anything freaky like that, but if she were asked what she was like two years ago, she wouldn't have an answer.

She briefly wonders if there is something wrong. If this is something that every teenager deals with. If nobody can actually remember where they took their best friend for a date a week ago.

She decides it's nothing and pulls her bed covers over her head.

**-x-x-x-**

"Hey, S, do you wanna help me practice my solo?" Brittany doesn't wait for an answer before dropping her doodled-on music sheet on Santana's lap.

And Santana's not, like, _completely surprised_ that Brittany had a solo. She didn't _forget_. But the fact had been hovering in the very back of her mind, inaccessible in her immediate thoughts, and Brittany's question served to bring it to the front of her mind so suddenly that she just _had_ to gasp.

Brittany rolls her eyes, unimpressed. "Um, yeah, I, like, _just_ got a solo. Like, today. You should stop staring at my legs when people are talking to you."

"Yeah, yeah," Santana says, annoyed at herself and the current line of conversation. "Let's do this."

**-x-x-x-**

"Hey, Santana," Brittany says with a fake accent, holding her (unamused) cat in the air as if he were the one talking, "remember when we—"

"_No!_" Santana shouts, breaking. "No I _don't_ remember!"

**-x-x-x-**

Of course, Santana, not being the absolute expert on dealing with a confrontation regarding personal emotions, flees to her home and locks herself up in her room forever.

Of course, Santana's mom, being the absolute expert on dealing with an emotional Santana, calls Brittany within the hour and convinces her daughter to come out of her room with the lure of chocolate ice cream.

"You suck," Santana says to Brittany, who had managed to get inside her room before she could slam the door in her face (she had also managed to bring some ice cream with her, so Santana didn't really try to get her to leave).

"Not recently," Brittany responds, getting about one spoonful of ice cream for every three of her friend's.

She doesn't ask Santana what her problem was; she'd talk about it in her own time.

**-x-x-x-**

As it turned out, Santana's own time is later that night, just after she had tucked her head into the nape of Brittany's neck (an impromptu sleepover had been declared) and wrapped her arm around the blonde's waist.

She sighs, and Brittany can feel the warm air travel across her neck and collarbone. "B," she says, tired, defeated, "I'm so useless."

Brittany doesn't respond, because it's not often that Santana gets into full-on _let's-talk-about-feelings_ mode, and she doesn't want to ruin it.

"It's like," Santana hesitates. "It's like I don't know who I am. I keep forgetting all these things that I did that were so important to me. I just _can't remember_." She turns and presses her face hard into Brittany's skin, and the blonde can feel just the hint of wetness against her neck. "I want to remember," Santana says.

That's all she'd say for the rest of the night. She holds Brittany tight and takes in her feel, scent, taste and refuses to move.

**-x-x-x-**

When Santana tells her mom three weeks later that she can't remember why she walked in the room and she's _scared_ goddammit and she wants to know why it's happening to _her_, the haggard lady shrugs and says that it runs in the family.

Santana is not taken to the doctor, because her mother has three other children and taxes and a dirty house to worry about, and because the Lopezes all fear that a major medical bill would bankrupt them.

**-x-x-x-**

Brittany writes Santana a book. It's titled simply "BFFs 4eva Looooove You ." It's made up of a bunch of multi-colored construction paper stapled together, and it is filled with written accounts, dfrawings, and pictures of what Brittany has deemed to be their Best Memories Ever.

It is simultaneously the sweetest thing Santana has ever seen and the most disturbing thing she's ever read in her life.

She smiles at nearly half the entries, remembering the times when she and Brittany went to the park with their mothers' stolen pans tied to their chests and pretended to be Transformers and the times when Brittany would splash around in the pool pretending to be a dolphin and would do whatever trick Trainer Santana told her to. Remembering when they watched Ghostbusters and Santana started to laugh at the very same scene that made Brittany cry and hide her face. Remembering when they would pretend they were cats and climb up on all the furniture and nearly give Brittany's mom a heart attack.

But then…

Then she reads the entries that might as well be from another person's life. She reads that apparently she and Brittany managed to convince Rachel Berry that there were dead people in the public pool and she never went there again. She reads that one time Brittany fell out of the tree she was climbing and landed on Santana and they both had a cast on their arm for a week. She reads inside jokes that mean nothing to her, and she sees drawings that she can't even comprehend.

It's fucking _creepy_ and before she can even think, she shouts in frustration and throws the handmade book across her room. The paper catches in the air and floats gently to the floor, but the single flimsy staple still snaps and sends the pages scattering. Santana growls and wants to scream again, so she does, but it turns to a sob halfway through, and she rises from her bed to carefully reorder the papers.

**-x-x-x-**

"Did you like it?" Brittany asks the next day. She had left after giving Santana her BFF book (mostly because it generally takes Brittany a whole night to get through something like that, _not_ taking interruptions into account) and now she's just dying to know what her friend thought.

"Britt—" The rest of Santana's answer, whatever it may have been, died in her throat. Instead, she pulled her best friend into a tight hug. "Thank you."

**-x-x-x-**

"S, hey, S!" Brittany calls, poking the sleeping girl until her eyebrows turn downward into a frown (that's Santana's '_I'm Awake_' sign). "Your mom made us pancakes with happy faces."

Santana's eyes open slowly—then she visibly tenses and sits up with a jerk. "I'm not hungry," she says. "You go."

Brittany frowns, but leaves obediently because seriously those pancakes are _awesome_. She leans her head back into the bedroom through the doorway, "I love you, S."

Santana doesn't respond. She doesn't even hear. She just stares at the wrinkled covers of her bed. Hating herself. Hating herself, because for a good five seconds, she had no clue who Brittany was.

**-x-x-x-**

"I don't know how I know you," Santana says to Brittany one afternoon.

"We're friends," Brittany answers simply, as if their entire relationship could be confined in the two words.

Santana shakes her head. "No. I mean, I don't remember meeting you."

"Okay!" Brittany exclaims and jumps off the bed, pulling the other girl with her. "Now, shake my hand."

Santana does so.

"My name's Brittany! Now we've met!"

Santana smiled, but it's weak. Brittany pulls on their still-connected hands until Santana is pressed up against her. "I'll keep doing that for you. I won't let you forget me, okay?"

"Okay."

**-x-x-x-**

Later in the night, Santana breaks the peaceful silence by whispering. "I don't remember how we met."

Brittany's grip on her waist tightens.

Santana adjusts herself so that she can cover Brittany's hand with her own. "I don't remember how we met. But I remember that I love you."

**-x-x-x-**

"Santana, I trust that you have brought the required musical sheets for the Glee Club's performance of—"

"Yeah, yeah. Right here," Santana interrupts Rachel, holding up a dozen copies of 'Thriller_._' "I know."

Next to her, Brittany frowns, because this morning Santana had stared at her blankly for a moment before she kissed her good morning. And now she's bringing Rachel Berry music.

**-x-x-x-**

"How come you can remember certain things but not others?" Brittany asks, sitting in her room after school with Santana's head on her lap.

Santana bristles—she _hates_ talking about this—and shrugs her shoulders roughly. "Dunno."

Brittany wraps some of Santana's hair around her fingers. "Don't forget me, okay?"

Santana turns her head and traps Brittany's hand against her own thigh using her cheek. Her voice shakes as she speaks. "God, I hope so."

.


End file.
